Barry Adamson’s out­put is envi­able, if spo­radic. He has a sto­ried solo career, has played with two leg­endary bands—Magazine and Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds—and scored films along the lines of Lost High­way. The lat­ter is espe­cially apt, as Adam­son is some­thing like the aural equiv­a­lent of David Lynch. He has a rep­u­ta­tion for giv­ing no ground to his audi­ence unless he deems it pru­dent, he prefers emo­tional and psy­chic land­scapes to lin­ear pro­gres­sions, and also pos­sesses an uncanny (or, some say, untal­ented) ear for the pur­ple prose of pulp. As you could well guess with such a resume—and such an M.O.—Adamson reg­u­larly plies his trade in the darker dis­tricts of the brain.

The slinky descend­ing bass riff, sparse snares, and spec­tral moan of wood­winds that open Adamson’s lat­est album, Back to the Cat, could very well have been lifted from an episode of Twin Peaks. But as the instru­ments layer one atop the other—first a few jagged stabs of elec­tric gui­tar, then the punch of brass—the mean­ing of Cat comes clear. Adam­son is not just a cat: he is a cool cat, a hep cat. He is the crooner on stage in the smoky lounge of the night­mare halfway between sleep and wake­ful­ness. He inhales pain and exhales smoke. As the music builds to a crescendo, he belts out a por­trait of hazy, black & white—or noir et blanche—streets that sounds like it was copped from the tor­tured sub­con­scious of Sam Spade: “I woke up this morn­ing from a crazy dream / the earth was a churn­ing ball of fire.” He fol­lows with a rapid-fire roll call of the sorts you could find slink­ing around here; tired, poor and hud­dled masses that Lady Lib­erty would sooner sink than send to shore.

This is the point where some lis­ten­ers jump ship. The music is cer­tainly a solid affair, but it shares a spot­light with Adamson’s voice, and some review­ers have found them­selves cring­ing at what he chooses to say with it (for ref­er­ence, see most reviews of Stranger on the Sofa). In all hon­esty, Adamson’s lyrics are no more ridicu­lous than any story Nick Cave has seen fit to tell. If you were to trade Ten­der Prey’s bour­bon for a mar­tini it would not look out of place rub­bing elbows with Back to the Cat. Mur­der­ous bal­lads and big band bruis­ers aren’t the only tricks up Adamson’s sleeves, though. “Straight ’til Sun­rise” pits a beau­ti­ful melody against an ugly story, play­ing on the jan­gling dis­so­nance of emo­tions that occurs when Bacharach meets assault and bat­tery. It is a rare thing for a song to squirm and swing on the same beat.

What will either make this album sweep­ingly mag­nif­i­cent or cloy­ingly corny is the way that it takes Adamson’s “sound­track with­out a film” con­cept to its log­i­cal extreme. The indi­vid­ual songs carry a sto­ry­line, albeit an appro­pri­ately frac­tured one, for the length of the album. To call it a con­cept album would be mostly inac­cu­rate, but when is that term applied cor­rectly these days? Still, it is more of a sur­real, Grand Guig­nol musi­cal sans stage pro­duc­tion than a pure-bred con­cept album. A bit para­dox­i­cally, Back to the Cat is almost a con­ven­tional album, as well, some­thing that long seemed impos­si­ble to expect from Barry Adam­son. There are only ten tracks, and only one of those over­runs five min­utes, which is how Back to the Cat man­ages to sur­pass those that came before. In this album Adam­son has reined in his sprawl­ing vision while still keep­ing his palate a lively mix of big city sins and deep, dark human vis­cera. Work­ing with such mate­r­ial, it is easy to make missteps—the devil-narrated gospel of “Civ­i­liza­tion” wears its irony like an albatross—but they are largely for­giv­able when kept in the con­text of such a cohe­sive whole.

Call it what you will—doom lounge, noir swing, death jazz—an irri­tat­ing obsta­cle still insists on pre­sent­ing itself: No one can make a “great album” in this genre. Musi­cally, lyri­cally, and con­cep­tu­ally Back to the Cat can be—and, despite its flaws, often is—great. But the cur­rent musi­cal land­scape will have no truck with inno­va­tors that don’t take them­selves seri­ously enough. To grab the tale of this ouroboros, take David Lynch as an exam­ple yet again. He cre­ates films that are dark, fright­en­ing, and often silly. Whether it is the self-conscious noir over­tones of Lost High­way and Mul­hol­land Drive, or the left field musi­cal inter­ludes of Wild at Heart and INLAND EMPIRE, Lynch never lets the audi­ence off with­out a slight grin. As a result he has a tren­chant group of admir­ers, but also the cracked ribcage of a man rou­tinely stomped by pop­u­lar crit­ics. So too with the cock­eyed genius of Barry Adam­son: A few may call him great, but they will be unfor­tu­nately out­num­bered by those who call him weird.

Barry Adamson’s Back to the Cat is avail­able via Ama­zon.